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China to Build a Zero-Carbon Green City
gormanw writes "Just outside Shanghai, there is an island about the size of Manhattan. China is going to build its first-ever 'green city', complete with no gasoline/diesel powered vehicles, 100% renewable energy, green roofs, and recycling everything. The city is called Dongtan and it should house about 5,000 people by the end of 2010, with estimates of 500,000 by 2050. The goal is to build a livable city that is energy efficient, non-polluting, and protects the wildlife in the area."
A friend of me says there's a pervasive attitude of "if a little is good, an enormous lot more must be better" when approaching the use of say, pesticides or other chemical intrusions into the local environment.
Classical education doesn't help this attitude much yet, but an excellent and well publicised example community might just make the difference.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
So basically the solution is to live close to an urban center. Unfortunately, housing is generally prohibitively expensive close to most urban centers (except for the ones that are so far gone with blight that there are no real jobs there anyway).
The American city (especially in the west) is built around personal automobiles. The affordable houses are well outside of walking or biking distance to most of the jobs, and are too chaotically arranged to allow for efficient mass transit.
Individual choice is part of the equation, but sane urban planning is also a big part of it. Cities and counties need to start doing more to encourage high density housing near urban centers and discourage the building of yet more suburbs and exurbs. Unfortunately, most local governments are too far in the pockets of developers to ever enforce strict zoning of that nature. Most of the new development I've seen near urban centers has also tended to be of the million-dollar-condo variety as well, which doesn't do a whole lot to solve the problem either.
Hey it worked for Toyota -- have more models of SUV than any other car manufacturer on planet, but come out with one "green" car and you're a "green" car company, no matter the 8 independent lines of SUV and largest/least full efficient main-line pickups on the market. Likewise -- produce more polution than any other country on the planet, but come out with one "green" city and you're a "green" country, no matter the literal 50% of population having no access to clean drinking water and #1 cause of death in nation being air pollution.
For all the pollution problems made more apparent by the Olympics, I give the Chinese a lot of credit for innovation. Between this, their "weather altering rockets" and whatever other efforts I've missed, we can at least say they innovate.
It makes me wonder if such nationalized industry as China contains might actually be good for massive innovation. Surely no corporation would undertake an initiative like this, especially on this scale, as the profits would be far too long term and unlikely.
If the internet has taught us anything it's that the Infinite Monkeys Corollary is more important than the Infinite Monkeys Theorem. The corollary reminds us that it doesn't matter whether the monkeys turn out Hamlet, because you'll need to read through an infinity of worthless crap before you find it.
Ah, but riding a bike to work, if you don't live in an area where it is common, is unusual. You're becoming unusual by trying to be more green than the rest of the population around you. Why would becoming a vegan be different?
For the record, i'm a meat-eater. Just like to present other sides. ;)
I live in the western world, but to believe that there is no corruption or evil in this society is not only naive, it's just pure ignorance. Shows us exactly why western society is rapidly devolving.
You've got to give them credit for trying SOMETHING. Over here, california tries to raise fuel efficiency standards and gets slapped down by the Bush administration. Did they even bother trying to spin that one?
Anyway, it will be interesting to see if the finished product is green or just green by comparison. Put a landfill next to a radioactive waste site and the landfill suddenly looks pretty eco-friendly.
Massive car parks at major commuter hubs are very often a bad idea. They seem good, but they actually serve to reduce public transport use.
If people have to get into their cars to drive, they'll drive the whole way unless that's impossible (e.g. because a million people need to go to the city in the morning). This means that public transport will have much less than its potential return on investment; anyone who's not travelling in the peak direction might as well drive. If you're from Melbourne you might know about the recurrent Doncaster line proposals; although I am an advocate of public transport investment, I hope that never gets build. Instead, a subway should be built to replace the 48 tram (and be extended all the way to Doncaster); in this way, the train stations will always be within walking distance of shops and houses and schools and other places people might want to go and the system will be used all day by people who don't have to use the train, but by the same token don't have to use their car.
Also, if there's a massive car park around the train station, it makes the station feel less safe and less useful. If you've got a ten or twenty minute wait before the train, you might want to go to shops to have something to do. If you've got to cross the car park, you'll be less likely to do this, you'll get bored, and you'll be more reluctant to catch the train next time. The optimum train station design has ground-level access directly to the street and the surrounding shops.
Also-also, car parks are massively expensive. It's basically dead land, no-one makes any money from them and you hope no-one's living in them. And there's not just the space inside the carpark, but the surrounding roads as well. Instead of having space for one hundred cars, you could put relatively dense housing and commercial development (relatively --- compared to the surrounding area, not compared to the whole city). In fact, a lot of stations which current have masses of car parking would be excellent candidates for the distributed CBDs (e.g. Dandenong in Melbourne).
Add in a decent bus or tram system (depending on the area) collecting people. This satisfies the problem of inefficient public transport; it's only inefficient because currently buses are treated as if they're welfare, whereas they should be treated as if they're a service. Instead of having four bus routes in each suburb running once every hour on different back roads so that no-one knows when they have to be where to take a bus, just run one route on the major roads. Make sure they're neat and tidy, and have schools run 10-4 instead of 9-3 to keep students off the buses when business folk are on them (and to improve concentration in the first period). Essentially treat buses like trams that run on liquefied dead creatures instead of petrified ones.
But cars are not the solution to public transport, cars are never a solution to greenhouse gases. If you try to accommodate cars you will end up having more cars.
Look out!
In Belgium we eat lots of pork. The pigs are kept in enormous stables and because we do not have enough land to feed the pigs we import it from Latin America where they burn rainforest to grow soya. Because the pigs farmers do not have lots of land they have too much manure. This is the main cause of ground water pollution in Belgium. I think similar problems exist in the US.
I have no doubt that many will consider me despicable, but I have a feeling that I am not alone in saying that I will not give up meat voluntarily.
It must either be priced out beyond the reach of my disposable income or an alternative must be proposed that is tastier or cheaper than the meat we have right now. Perhaps vat grown meat, perhaps soy meat(It's quite tasty, but not easy to come by). In any case, I will eat meat.
I believe I am not alone in this because wishful thinking only goes so far in changing behavior. Sure we don't need laws if everbody is willing to act properly, but the simple fact is that many people don't behave unless you make it the best strategy. People can cut gas consumption, it's obvious that we can because we already have during the recent gas price jump. The world didn't end. Why didn't we do it earlier? Because the high price wasn't there to force us to use less gas. Republicans want to open up artic drilling as if that was a good thing, but really, our best insurance against Peak Oil is moderately high oil prices to drive alternative energy investment. Talking about it isn't enough, people need to feel pressure in their practical day-to-day lives.
A smug sense of self-righteousness might be a satisfactory replacement for a steak to some people, but not for me. I'll just eat my steak and be happy. If you want people like me to stop, it must be taken from me.
No justification here, I'm just pointing out the reality of the situation.